


Where the ocean meets the sky

by Beleriandings



Category: Akatsuki no Yona | Yona of the Dawn
Genre: Fairy Tale Elements, Friendship, Gen, Mermaids, Pirates, the adventures of teenage feminist dragon pirate Jae-ha, warning for the general background Awa human trafficking situation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-26 14:20:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13859529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: In Awa, Jae-ha makes a new friend. Some time later, a kindness is repaid.





	Where the ocean meets the sky

Jae-ha stood back, looking out and trying to peer into the alleyway apprehensively as the girls ran out of the opened cellar door past him, to freedom. There were more of them this time, and younger; the trafficking rings had become much more common, cleverer and bolder lately. Mostly, in fact, since Kum-ji had come to power and started making incremental changes to small details of import and export duties and the types of cargo inspection that were required for incoming and outgoing vessels, and when and by whom. And while there was nothing immediate and conclusive to link the man to this cruellest of trades – Jae-ha saw a girl run past him with purple bruises all across her face and down below the neckline of her torn dress – Gigan certainly believed there was a connection, and if she did then so did Jae-ha. It was just a matter of finding proof.

He was just looking around at this most recent place – a tailor’s shop had been used as the cover this time – for any details he could bring back to Gigan to add to her arsenal of information, when he felt a tug on his sleeve. 

He turned. There, at his side, was a girl about his own age with long, dark hair loose across her shoulders, dressed in a robe of ragged cloth that might once have been blue. She looked pale and wan and sick, with deep shadows under her eyes; more so even than the other poor girls who had been closed up in the dark cellar for who knew how long.

He tried to smile at her. “Go!” he said, gesturing down the alley where all the other girls were fleeing. “You’re free to go wherever you want.”

Still she was silent, staring at him with an intensity that was fast becoming rather disconcerting. Perhaps she was too afraid to move; perhaps she had not known freedom in so long that she didn’t know what to do with it immediately.

That thought sent Jae-ha’s eyes slipping inexorably to the angry red rope burns on her wrists. Even the sight of them made the skin on his own wrists and ankles prickle a little, and he felt a renewed wave of anger at the people who had done this. “Do you…” he ventured, staring back at her, “do you not have anywhere to go?”

“I…” the girl’s voice was cracked, lower and a little huskier than he had expected. She looked around, each way, and frowned. “Which way to the sea?”

“Ah…” Jae-ha frowned. He pointed over his shoulder in the direction of the harbour. “That way? The third street on the right takes you down to the waterfront…but - ”

But he fell silent, as the girl nodded, staring into his eyes once more and took his hand. Her fingers were very cold, and she looked him in the eye, with an expression he had no idea how to read. At least until she spoke, catching him off guard all over again.

“You saved me” she said, dark eyes haunted, seeing something other than him standing before her, it almost seemed. “They had me down there in the dark, hurting and still and unable to get free.” She frowned a little, gave a slight gasp as she scrutinised him more carefully. “Oh! You _know_ , dragon boy!” she said. “You know what it’s like to be locked away in the dark. The air and the bright water saved you, but…you know!”

Jae-ha couldn’t speak. He just kept staring, panic rising up within him. _She knew_ ; that was all he could think. It was an old fear, one that had been strong when he had first come to Awa several years ago. Gigan and her good sense had helped him to calm that fear, but now it was back full force; _she knew._

_How did she know?_ He felt his hand trembling involuntarily in hers; _just who was this girl and what did she plan to do with what she knew?_

“You’re afraid” she continued, when he did not answer. “You’re afraid that they’ll hurt you again. You free others, but you’re so scared that you’ll be sent back, locked away in the dark -”

“ _Stop it!_ ” Jae-ha finally burst out. He wrenched his hand away from her, pulling it back. Immediately, the girl cowered back, frightened, and immediately he collected himself, hastily lowering his hand in horror of what she might have assumed by such a gesture. There had been a time, after all, when he would have flinched like that too. “Ah…” he said, trying to smooth over the tremble in his voice with a smile. “Pardon me. You simply startled me…”

“It’s…alright” said the girl. She seemed to be recovering too. She blinked, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and gave him a tentative smile. “I just meant to say…I’ll remember this kindness, dragon boy.” She took his hand again, pressed something into it. “And if you’re ever near my home, or if they try to take you and pull you from the sky into the dark, then I will repay it.”

He smiled a little. “Much as I would love to see you again, I don’t plan on getting myself into…”

But he tailed off. For even as he was speaking, the girl had run off, in the direction in which he had pointed her a moment ago. He frowned; in that direction was the harbour. All the other girls had run off into town and the market square, where – presumably – their families were. But it was the early hours of the morning; there would only be the fishermen bringing in the catch, and the few dockers and patrols who worked through the night. Some drunken sailors and the few girls who worked the harbourside from dusk to dawn. But he knew all the girls from the brothels in town, and she wasn’t any of them. Maybe just a desperate newcomer, all alone, who had got herself in trouble, with no one on her side and no knowledge of how things were in Awa? There were always those.

_Still_. Something felt as though it was missing. He opened his hand; she had pressed something into his palm as she had gone, and as he saw what it was he stared in surprise and awe; it was a pale blue pearl, lumpy and irregular but still bright and iridescent, its surface like rippling water glimmering in the grey light before dawn.

Jae-ha closed his hand around it, clutching it close.

After all the girls had run to safety – luckily before the owners of the place noticed the opened cellar door - Jae-ha began his stealthy journey around the bay to where Gigan’s ship was anchored just off the headland. He kept mostly to the shadows; soon the town of Awa would be waking, and he didn’t want to risk jumping into the sky out in the open. But as he went, he couldn’t help but make a detour to the docks, in the direction the girl had gone.

From a rooftop, he peered down into the waters where several ships were anchored; he didn’t know what he was expecting to see, but when for some time he saw nothing, he gave up and carried on his way.

* * *

Except for some days when he would take the pearl out to look at it, Jae-ha didn’t think of that day again for several months. The next time he did though, he was near to drowning; some splintered wood and rigging was caught fast around his ankle, sinking inexorably to the floor of the bay, water pressing in on his ribcage and making his lungs scream out for air.

Jae-ha’s hand passed through water, weak and useless against the weight pulling him down as bubbles exploded from his mouth. Above him he could see the full moon, distorted by the tumult above.

The battle outside the harbour mouth had gone bad very quickly. One moment, they were boarding a ship, planning to take it and free the people they suspected were being confined in the hold. Jae-ha was to jump to the crow’s nest and take out the lookouts before they could raise the alarm, so that others could board, then busy himself slitting the sails and cutting at the ropes and rigging so her captain couldn’t run from the pirate ship’s attack. And he had done that; it had worked, admirably well.

That is, until it hadn’t.

An archer had caught him, just as he had been slitting the mainsail with one of his blades; the arrow had struck his hip, and it had caught him off guard, and missed his footing. As he had fallen, the sailcloth and ropes he had cut had tangled around him, leaving him hanging over the edge of the boat by the ankle for a long, horrible moment; in that instant, every nightmare story of keel-hauling, the cruel practice in far distant lands, had passed through his head; he was not touching the barnacles on the hull, but if she were to catch a wind and turn about in the water they could take off all his skin and leave him to bleed out in the salt water, in terrible pain…

Jae-ha had just about had the air in his lungs and the presence of mind to pull out his dagger and saw through the rope tethering his leg to the ship. But that only meant that he was floating free now, yet still enmeshed within the loose rigging, as well as something heavy that may have been a spar that had broken off as he fell.

And little by little, no matter how hard he kicked and struggled, it was pulling him down. He tried to grow and shrink his dragon leg to perhaps wriggle free, but it was no good; besides, he was running out of air, and he was conscious of a cloud of darkness in the water coming from the arrow wound in his hip, blood drifting upwards like smoke, agitated by his struggling.

It was dark, he realised with a further spike of panic. Even if they did notice he was gone, they would never see him here in the water as they would in the bright light of day that painted Awa harbour a bright rippling turquoise, glimmering with darting silver fish. Here they were in deeper water at the harbour mouth, and the only light to see where he was fallen was the pale silver of the moon.

Even his power was of little use to him now; after all there was nothing to kick against, nothing to jump and no ground on which to land. As he struggled and thrashed, he saw the ribbon come loose from his hair and drift away into the darkness. But even as he watched, his vision blurred as his lungs felt ready to burst for lack of air. He would have cried out in anger, in frustration; he was supposed to _live_ , now. He was supposed to have something of a life of freedom at least, even if it was still to be cut short. He had escaped, hadn’t he? Perhaps, he thought, his mind fogged with lack of air, this was the dragon gods’ punishment for his defiance.

He gritted his teeth; he didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to have to see Garou again, to have to face him again with what had passed between them. But neither did he want to be tied down to the living world as a restless spirit, unable to feel the warmth of the sun or the rush of the sea wind on his skin. He didn’t know which prospect was worse. But one thing was certain; in that moment, Jae-ha could see no way that he could survive this.

And then, he became aware of a new sensation. In his hand, he found himself clutching something small and hard very tight, with no memory of having reached for it. Even without looking, he knew it was, inexplicably, the little blue pearl; he had kept it in an inside pocket all this time, without quite knowing why. And in that moment, with his mind on the edge of drowning, it seemed to make perfect sense that it should simply be in his hand.

Yet even then, he did not have much time to think about that, as he became aware of something else; the weight, the force that was dragging him down, was suddenly lessened, with a feeling like something snapping. A moment later, it happened again, and he felt the motion of a sharp edge brushing against the scales at his ankle – he must have lost his shoe, he thought dazedly – as he felt motion there, that seemed very much like the sawing of something sharp against a rope.

What was this? Was it some illusion, or some being that would carry him to the heavens when he died? Was he dead already? _If only he could see_ … fearfully, he made himself turn his eyes from the sky and look downwards into the black depths.

He almost gasped out his very last air at the sight he saw.

It was her; the girl he had saved. He was sure it was her, though she looked almost entirely unlike the time he had seen her before. She was naked but her body was lightly covered in pearlescent scales, more like those of a fish than his own dragon’s scales. Her hair drifting like a dark cloud, in counterpoint to the drifting blood from Jae-ha’s wound.

And her feet… they simply weren’t there at all. Her legs were fused into the tail of a fish, like creatures in the stories that sailors told after too much to drink on dark nights.

Yet here she was. Besides, Jae-ha thought vaguely, he supposed he himself was not so terribly different; he too was a travellers’ tale, a relic of an older, stranger world brought to life.

He watched the girl again; she held a knife carved entirely from some sharp stone, and was sawing at the ropes and tangled cloth that bound his dragon leg. Already the wooden spar had come loose, and he could see it falling to the dark sea floor below.

And for a moment she met his eyes, looking up and smiling, a smile with teeth that were just a little too sharp. And in that moment, Jae-ha found himself – in defiance, despite all that had happened – smiling back.

A moment later though, she was back to her work, and very soon after that – Jae-ha never knew how long he was there, for time seemed to slip and shift like the very water itself when he was in its dark grip – she was cutting through the last rope, and he was desperately swimming and kicking his way up to the surface. His head broke through, and he was immediately coughing and vomiting salt water, clinging to a floating barrel that must have fallen from the ship. Air flooded his lungs, replacing the water that was pouring from his mouth and nose, dredging up sobs of relief from deep in his chest. He pushed back his sodden hair that had been slicked over his face in a wet tangle, and was able to breath a little easier.

After a while, he looked over to the ships; the battle, such as it was, seemed to have calmed down some, though he couldn’t tell which side had won. Jae-ha gritted his teeth; he was alive, and that meant that his captain and his crew needed him. He must get back and lend them his power as soon as he could.

But first, there was one more thing he needed to do. Clinging to the barrel with one arm and paddling with his feet, he turned in a circle, looking down into the dark water; the pearl, he realised, was still clutched in his other hand.

It was hard to see anything below, not least because of the moonlight illuminating the surface of the water in rippling silver. But even as he looked around, a head popped up from below, sleek and wet hair cast in brightness as a face lit up with a smile to see him alive.

Jae-ha smiled too, as her hand came up out of the water; she was holding something, and after a moment, Jae-ha saw that it was the ribbon that had come loose from his hair. “Yours” she said. She paused for a moment. “I…I had to help you. We’re…we’re not supposed to help you people…”

“Then why did you?”

“Because you helped me when they tried to lock me up, away from the sea. And because…. because it’s not right. The sea’s not your place” she said. Suddenly her eyes were far away. “You’re meant to be up in the sky.”

Jae-ha didn’t really know what to say to that. “Ah… well, th-thank you.” Tentatively, he took the proffered ribbon back, trod water as he tied it back in place. The motion jarred his wounded side; he had almost forgotten, the pulse beating too fast in his veins, and the frenetic energy of the struggle to survive dulling the pain. But now he was starting to calm down it was returning. The girl saw the twitch to his face, and immediately began swimming in a circle around him, obviously worried.

“It’s alright” said Jae-ha, his voice croaky from the salt water’s burn in his throat. “I’ll be… I’ll be alright now.” He hesitated. “Thank you” he said.

She shrugged. “We’re even, now.”

“I know.” He held out his hand to her, the pearl there. “Ah…do you want this back?”

The girl looked back at him, sitting in the water. She tilted her head. “It was a gift.”

Jae-ha smiled, gently taking her hand and placing it back there. “Then I’m giving it back, also as a gift.” He hesitated; he had the feeling that somehow, the charm that he had been learning to exercise on others wouldn’t work here. He felt curiously awkward and exposed suddenly, as she stared at him with those strange dark eyes reflecting the moonlight. “It’s very beautiful you see… so I think you should have it.”

“But then we’re not even anymore!”

“Well… then maybe that means we’ll just have to meet again?”

She opened her mouth, about to say something, then closed it again, then said, “well, how about I give you one more thing?”

“Oh! Alright…?”

And before he could say anything, she had come up close and rubbed the tip of his nose with her own. A moment later, she darted backwards again and suddenly they were both laughing, a shared, bubbling well of happiness just for two, for a moment, despite all that had gone before.

The next moment though, she was gone, diving back beneath the rippling waves into the dark below that was her home, leaving Jae-ha all alone on the surface, where the waves rippled with the silver light of the moon.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I......just want Jae-ha to have mermaid friends okay


End file.
